Animoto: Super-quick music videos and slideshows

In a moment of software serendipity, I just happened to come across the perfect tool right when I needed it. I had done a quick interim site redesign for the wonderful Lari White, and she wanted to add a kind of career-retrospective slideshow which showed a collection of photos 'through-the-years' set to a medley of songs spanning her recording career. I had put off this task to the very end of the project, as I knew it was going to consume far more time that I wanted it to - or had even budgeted for.

At about this time I stumbled across Animoto via some slideshow exploring how the youtube api is being leveraged by different new video startups. This was the perfect solution! Animoto allows you to quickly set photos, text blocks (titles, sentences, captions), and video to a soundtrack of your choosing. You just upload and order and the app does all the rest - adding in super cool transitions and effects which seem to be set to match up pretty well with the music.



Costs
You can mess about for free - I think can make a 30 second video. For a longer video that is not hi-def, you have to buy a credit, which is only $3 - certainly affordable. A more robust package that removes all Animoto branding is gonna run you $250/annually, which is still very affordable for the right business.

The Cons of Animoto
Unfortunately, if you are kind of anal about your photo/video projects like me, and really like to be able to tweak things just-so, this is not the tool. Animoto allows you to select the pics/video you want to use, order the pics, and intersperse text blocks. Text is treated as an element the same as a pic, so you cannot overlay text onto a photo or video, though you can introduce a series of shots with a text title. You have no real ability to line up the elements with the music, just order things and hope for the best.

However, the lack of fine-tuning controls can be looked at as a positive as well, as it encourages you to generate content quickly, and move along with your life. for a 'tweaker' like me, the blatant inability to tweak endlessly makes it easier to finalize your movie.

Applications
More and more, youtube is replacing MySpace as the principal destination for quick music listening and discovery. Nearly everyone has the ability to see and enjoy video nowadays, and tend to expect it. For artists, this looks to be a great way to throw your music up, paired with some nice live or publicity shots, as well as some textual information about the album, single, or directions to your website for more. For an album launch, this could be a great way to introduce the new music, and can be paired with youtube promotions for greater effect. Additionally-  for further tweaking, I suppose you could download your finished Animoto product and dump it into Imovie/Final Cut/Vegas or a similar program for more robust editing.

Animoto allows you to batch upload your photos, order them, and intersperse text blocks.


I have no affiliation to Animoto, but if you use the referral code rhpgaosm when signing up, I get some sort of credit towards future use.